To feed families, educate children, they came to work and died

The men were giving finishing touches to the masonry while the women workers were watering the walls of 2BHK and 3 BHK flats. They were people who died after the 11-floor ‘Faith’ tower, being built by Prime Sristi Housing Ltd in Chennai, collapsed a week ago.

These men and women would never have lived in the building. The 975-sq foot 2 BHKs were priced at Rs 48.75 lakh; the 1,713-sq foot 3 BHKs at Rs 80 lakh. The twin towers ‘Faith’ and ‘Belief’ were their home only temporarily. They slept in the basements or on the ground floor, and looked after the buildings as they came up.

The death toll in the tragedy reached 61 on Friday. Most of those who died were migrants from Vizianagaram and Srikakulam districts of Andhra Pradesh, and Gajapati district of Orissa. They had left jobs as farm workers to come to Chennai to work at the construction site — where the contractor gave them no employment contract, promised no compensation in case of death or injury, and made them work seven days a week until late at night, mostly barefeet and without basic safety equipment such as helmets and gloves.

But still they came — because it got them on average Rs 175 more daily than what they made in their villages. The men got Rs 400 per day; the women between Rs 225 and Rs 275.

Saturday was payday, and at the time the building collapsed, the workers were waiting for their wages. The earlier week’s dues had not been paid either, and they were eager to see the contractor’s clerk arrive with the cash. Many of them had loans to repay, many had borrowed money to educate their children in the hope that they wouldn’t then have to work at construction sites like their parents.

Of the 20 women who were killed, 12 were from Vizianagaram and 8 from Srikakulam districts. Most of them were young mothers who had decided to join their husbands in Chennai. The Indian Express managed to learn the stories of a few of them.

Bongu Santha Kumari, 25: She was married at the age of 19, and was the mother of a five-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. She was working on the six floor; her husband B Appala Naidu was in the other tower. Her body was found on June 30, the day after the building collapsed. Santha had never worked outside her home earlier, but had decided to accompany her husband to Chennai last December after they admitted their son to an anganwadi school.

She was getting Rs 250 per day for carrying buckets of water twice a day to floors assigned to her. Appala Naidu said she was looking forward to receiving Rs 1,750 that evening, and had spoken to him about wanting to use the money to buy a gas stove for their continued…